Fight or Flight Reflex
by mackerel sky
Summary: HD SLASH. Draco writes Harry a letter. R for swearing and fighting and because Draco gets really graphic (just in Chapter 4) when he talks about sex. Plus an epilogue from Harry’s perspective.
1. Draco's Letter 1

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and for the sex in Chapter 4.

****

Draco's Letter

H. This is for you, when it comes to that. D.

I fell for you long before I started providing the good guys with information. The two things had nothing to do with one another, although I'm sure no one believes that now. I can see how it would appear from the outside: Remus Lupin needed what I knew; you were the only person who could reach Lupin without being traced. What luck for someone who wanted to get into your pants. 

It would have been easier if that were the whole story. But the fact is, I did believe in what I was doing. Maybe not my sanest hour, but after forfeiting the belief system I'd been force-fed since birth, I had to make my own faith. The fact that you happen to be kind of like a religion all by yourself was just a sublime coincidence. 

In any case, if this self-indulgent exercise provokes your usual lash-out-first-interpret-later reaction, I would like to say in my defense, Harry, that as far as you were concerned, everything was real.

::

The day I outed myself as a spy to Harry Potter by asking him to help me reach Remus Lupin, he was alone on the Quidditch pitch, fussing with his broom. I walked up behind him, not too close, and cleared my throat. 

He spun around, alert and hostile, and said, "What the fuck do you want, Malfoy?" 

Usually, angry people bored me, but Harry's anger was very sexy. It was like all that furious energy might as easily be horniness as violence, and if the dice fell right our next fight might be a hell of a shag. I must have grinned a little suggestively because he suddenly looked very confused. 

"Hello, Potter. I need to get a message to Remus Lupin. Dumbledore said I should ask you." 

"What? Why?" 

"I have some information." 

"What the hell does that mean? Information. You're selling out?"

I just shrugged.

"I don't believe you. This is one of your tricks. Dumbledore can get in touch with Remus whenever he wants."

"He said you had a special way." 

Harry glared at me in disbelief. He said, "Why would you do this?" 

"Extreme positions are stupid. I want to find some middle ground." I meant it. It was crazy the way wizards tiptoed around Muggles. We were more powerful than they were, for god's sake, we shouldn't have had to hide that. On the other hand, I agreed that murdering them was unreasonable. In fact, I had a squeamishness about murder that unsuited me for either villainy or heroism. Much later, when Harry confided in me his fear that he might be able to kill without remorse, I realized that, ironically, golden Harry Potter was infinitely darker than I could ever be. On the flip side, I never had any fear of death.

Harry was outraged at my explanation. He shouted, "There is no middle ground! The Death Eaters are wrong! Killing Muggles is wrong! Sending innocent people to Azkaban is wrong!" 

"Harry," I said, suddenly close enough to touch him. I had never called him Harry before. We both stared down at my hand where it wrapped around his arm. I remember thinking how toned he was from Quidditch. He shook me off angrily. I said, "Calm down." 

"Fine. All right. What's the information?" 

"Directions and a password for infiltrating a meeting." 

"Give it to me."

"I can't commit it to parchment. Dumbledore said I should talk to Lupin myself."

"Yeah. All right. There is one way. I don't use it much. Here." Harry looked around to make sure we were alone and pulled a rectangular mirror out of his pocket.

Lupin had the other mirror. Harry managed to rouse him and handed it to me. Lupin looked pale, but he had a nice smile, warm. He said, "Hello, Draco."

I told him what I knew and he thanked me and I handed the mirror back to Harry. He looked at me, still suspicious, and walked away to speak with Lupin privately. When he was done, he walked back, pushing the mirror into his pocket. I remember thinking how much he didn't trust me. He said, "Is that it?"

I nodded and said, "Thanks," and left. 

::

Harry started our second quasi-civil conversation. He found me in the library. I looked up to see him watching me. He was nervous. I said, "You look a little nervous, Potter. Come to ask me to the Yule Ball?" The people around me tittered sycophantically. 

"Sorry to disappoint you, Malfoy. I know you've been wrecking your bed sheets with that dream for weeks."

"Potter!" I said, delighted. "That's hilarious. There may be hope for you yet."

He looked at me warily, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Our audience also waited, confused. I just smiled at him expectantly. Finally, I said, "You wanted something?"

"I, uh…" Harry looked at the people around us. They were pretty much salivating to see me humiliate him, but the idea of pretending to hate him seemed very boring and stupid. I stood up and nodded toward the door. 

Out in the corridor he said, "I heard from Lupin. He wanted to say thanks."

"So it worked out then."

"Yeah. Uh, Malfoy? Isn't this a little weird for you?"

"I'd think you of all people would respect the sacrifices one makes to do the right thing."

"I don't understand why. I mean, what changed? When did it change?"

"Much as I appreciate your rather affecting desire for a heart to heart, I'm afraid I'm not ready to confide my deepest feelings in you, Potter."

"Yeah, okay. It's just---" He was looking at me with a strange expression of concentration and I thought, Oh holy hell, I do kind of want to confide my deepest feelings in Harry Potter. I waited a beat too long and the opening passed.

"Harry!" yelled a shrill female voice. Great. Granger. She hurried up to us and looked back and forth between us suspiciously. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," he said, and then, without even glancing at me, he left with her. She looked back once. I winked at her, grinned when she sniffed, and walked back into the library. 

****

::

It was more than two months before I had another reason to talk to Harry. Late January, snowing like the devil. I walked over to his table at breakfast and said, "I need to talk to you."

Harry turned bright red. Weasley and Granger glared at me from either side of him. Harry said, "What the fuck for?"

I shrugged. "Usual reason."

He just stared at me, all rumpled and hostile. Yeah, he was pretty cute.

"I take it you've neglected to share the details of our torrid affair with Weasel and the Mudblood?" I managed to deliver this sardonically, although it wasn't really in my usual line, humor-wise, and then I ruined it by cracking up at the expressions on their faces. I had never seen three people look so horrified. The entire Great Hall was staring at me. I could feel tears at the corners of my eyes. "Come on, Potter. Humor me before I laugh myself into a coma."

"Fine," he said, getting up.

"Harry," said Weasley, alarmed. "What the hell are you doing?"

Granger looked furious. "I don't know what you're up to, Malfoy---"

"But you'd love an excuse to hex me into oblivion. Yes, Granger, I know. Thanks for remaining so obsessed despite my probably very distressing lack of interest. Coming, Potter?"

We walked out into the hallway and found an empty classroom. Harry handed me the mirror without speaking. When I was done, I returned it and he spoke to Lupin for a few minutes before turning back to me. He said, "Why are you still here?"

I shrugged and said, "Waiting to thank you, I guess. Hard to override years of lovely manners."

"Just stop for a second. Okay? I want to ask you something." He gathered himself. "I know you aren't going to tell me why you're doing this, so, fine, but you need to tell me who knows. I mean, it's pretty weird that I'm keeping your deepest secret right now."

"I don't know that it's my very deepest secret---"

"I said stop doing that!"

"Temper, Potter. All right. Dumbledore, Lupin, Snape, possibly McGonagall. Apart from that, only you."

"So all of Slytherin---"

"Obviously. Haven't you noticed that they still follow me around like lemmings?"

"I guess. That must be sort of…lonely."

God, it was lonely. Lonely enough to make me want to throw myself off of the North Tower. Or on top of Harry Potter. I said, "I'm touched by your concern, Potter."

"Shut up, Malfoy."

"Your rather limited concern."

"Whatever. Now we're done?"

"We are. I'll let you know when I need to impose on you again." I turned to go.

Harry said, "Yeah, fine," behind me, but his voice was devoid of hostility and strangely leading. I turned back. "Look. It's just… If you ever want to tell me why… You can."

I met his eyes then and felt my own totally give me away. I was able to keep them pretty blank and cold most of the time, but once in a while they failed me and I knew that for Harry, just then, it was like seeing a shade snap up. Great. My inner self, all naked in front of Harry Potter. I could see him reading me and said, genuinely, "Thanks, Potter. I'm all right. But I appreciate it." And then I left.

::

A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.


	2. Draco's Letter 2

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and for the sex in Chapter 4.

We did end up having the loneliness conversation. Quite by chance, we signed up for the same lab hours in the astronomy tower. Granger had been and gone before I got there and Millie and Pansy had skipped out to sneak into Hogsmeade. I arrived on the roof to find Harry by himself, bent over a telescope. When he looked up, I said, "I realize I appear to be stalking you. Trust me when I tell you, it's an optical illusion."

"No. I, ah… Yeah. It's just… Being on speaking terms with you is extremely weird."

"Yes. Do you mind?"

"Not really. I guess." 

I set up facing away from him and avoided his eyes, trying to concentrate on the work that had brought me up there and reminding myself that I had not been lying when I said I wasn't stalking him. When I was finally done, I started to gather my things and heard him clear his throat behind me. 

He said, "You are pretty lonely, aren't you?"

I didn't respond, just turned to face him and leaned back against the parapet.

"I guess I can tell because I am too, a little. I mean, what with Ron and Hermione… I haven't really been lonely since…well, since before school."

"Oh." This seemed like a safer topic. "Why were you then?"

"Because my lunatic Muggle relations kept me locked in a closet under the stairs."

"God." I didn't know what to say. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. But later I had some magic revenge."

"Like what?"

"Blew up my aunt. Watched Hagrid turn my cousin into a pig. Actually, before I even knew I was a wizard, I sicced a sixty-foot python on him. So I've vented a little."

"The python. Because you're a Parselmouth?"

"Yeah. I had no idea about that then. We were in a zoo. That's a place where Muggles keep wild animals. It just started talking to me. I thought it was speaking English. That's why I was so surprised during the duel---"

"God, I was so jealous." I felt my body temperature drop just thinking about it. "It literally made me sick." It had, too. Several hours after Harry's revelation broke up Lockhart's little dueling club, my anger and jealousy compounded into such a blistering nausea that I puked my guts up. God, how I hated him. And now I was staring at him. Wonderful. Perhaps infatuation was just a cunning ploy to sidestep all of that corrosive envy. Never underestimate the survival skills of Draco Malfoy. I snorted mirthlessly.

Innocent Harry was watching me blankly. "What? Why?"

"Talking to snakes should be a Slytherin gift. You were always showing me up."

Harry laughed. "I was, wasn't I? You were such a bratty little prince."

It occurred to me that Harry knew much less about me than I knew about him. I hoisted myself onto the wall, and registered, without intent, how easy it would be to drop to my death. Then I looked up and saw the stars pricking a blackness as soft as someone's perfect skin under my blind mouth. My life was a nightmare, but I always kind of loved the world. I said, "When you got here, every triumph you had was a gift from the gods, galleons dropping from the sky. Voluptuous excess. For me, success has always been a bare minimum. Between losing out to you and Granger, I've spent the last six years in existential debt. It's lousy, Harry, being a prince." 

"Okay," said Harry, mock-dutifully. "Poor Malfoy."

"No. I'm just pointing out why I'm more screwed up than you are."

"Well, you have been kind of a prick."

I thought about losing to him on the Quidditch field, over and over and over again. I pictured Crouch turning me into a white ferret and slamming me against the hall floor. I remembered collapsing onto the grass coughing up blood after Harry and George Weasley sucker-punched me for insulting their mothers. 

I said, "Maybe." But I was thinking that it was mostly just words, that I talked a lot of trash, but rarely threw the first punch. And Harry got away with it because he was so fucking righteous. I could never have swaggered around like that. And his insults were a non-issue. I could just imagine my father's cold eyes on me, disgusted that I had been weak enough to react to a verbal taunt. I didn't want Harry to feel sorry for me and added lightly, "On the other hand, I expect I have more fun." 

We weren't facing each other, both still vaguely focused on the night sky, but I could feel him watching me out of the corner of his eye. He said, "You think?" Something in his tone altered my meaning.

"Probably." My voice was a little uneven. Not good. I said, "Look, Potter. I think I'm done up here. I'll see you around." And I left. Looking back on it now, it seems incredibly cowardly, how I was always running away from him.

::

I also ran into him. It wasn't stalking, because I didn't do it with any deliberation or consistency. Instead, periodically and inexorably, I got sucked into his orbit. For his part, he grew less and less likely to push me away.

One day, after a Peeves-related disruption in the Potions classroom forced Snape to keep us waiting in the corridor for twenty minutes, I wandered over to him. Granger and Weasley were all wrapped up in one another and my lot were busy laying wagers on the outcome of a prank that Blaise and Vincent were planning to pull. He looked at me warily. I said, "Hey, Potter."

"Hey, Malfoy." He glanced at the rest of the Slytherins. "What are they doing?"

"Blaise is trying to break up Adrian and Morag. He's sent Adrian three Howlers this week, supposedly from other girls."

"Oh, yeah. I guess I'd noticed that. Is it working?"

"Not really. Everyone knows he's doing it. But Vince thought it would be pretty funny if Morag walked in on Adrian with a boy, so he got Pansy to make him a romantic delusion potion and they're taking bets on Morag's reaction."

Potter said, without any self-pity, "It must be fun to be a normal student."

"God. Are you serious? Potter, this is the pitiable outcome of severe boredom. Be grateful you have something more dignified to occupy your mind."

"Oh, right, yes. Death and mayhem. Very grateful. Who's the boy?"

I said, extremely deadpan, "Ron Weasley."

"What?" Potter whirled on me, fists clenching, "Malfoy, you fuck---"

"I'm _joking_, Potter! It was a joke." People were already staring.

"Tell me who it is then," Potter hissed. He was so angry, white-knuckled and ferocious, with a blue vein throbbing in his temple.

I said, very low, so that only he could hear me, "If I were convinced you liked girls, it might have been funny to pick you. But Adrian's kind of good-looking. I didn't want to take the chance." All the rage drained out of him and he took a nervous step back. I smiled malevolently.

He said, without heat, "Stay away from me, Malfoy, you crazy---"

"Mr. Potter!" Snape bellowed. "Ten points from Gryffindor for using profanity in the corridor."

Granger immediately piped up, "But he didn't even---" I was impressed that she had registered this from the latitude of Weasley's tonsils.

"Twenty," said Snape shortly, cutting her off and sweeping back into the classroom. As we filed in behind him, Potter looked at me with a sort of alarmed curiosity. I widened my evil smile amidst the sniggering compliments of my Slytherins as Granger tugged him protectively out of view.

When a wild-eyed Adrian entered the Great Hall at dinner time a few days later, followed by a sheepish, roughed-up Theodore Nott and a baleful Morag, Potter glanced across at me from the Gryffindor table. The next time I saw him, putting things away in the Herbology greenhouse, he gave me a bland look and asked, "Win any money?"

"What?"

"In the Morag stakes."

"Oh. That. Didn't wager."

"I thought it was your idea."

"No. I just said that to piss you off."

"Malfoy. I didn't know you cared."

"Yes, you did. I've spent the majority of my time since we were eleven trying to piss you off."

"Now that you mention it, maybe I have noticed something."

"Am I having any luck?"

He gave me a surprisingly sexy grin. "Less and less."

I rolled my eyes. "For god's sake, Potter. Don't flirt with me."

::

Our exchanges were occasionally philosophical. He was obsessed with figuring out why I had "switched sides." I hadn't of course; I just wanted to lower the body count and Lupin was the only person I could reach who was doing any rescuing.

One day in the broom shed, he accused me of thinking that good was relative.

"Yes." 

"Why?"

"Without absolute perspective, it's impossible to recognize or perform objectively good acts."

"The whole world and all of history give us perspective."

"We are the world; we have no perspective."

''I guess all that relativism absolves you of responsibility."

"Maybe. I do have one moral conviction."

"What?"

"Killing people is bad."

"That's not a position. That's a truism."

"Hardly. Lots of people don't give a damn. Particularly not in the service of a cause."

"Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

"That's a little high-handed. I thought you were all about protecting the innocent."

"Everyone who fights in a war knows that some death is inevitable."

"Sometimes people choose to sacrifice themselves. But that's not the same thing."

"What are you getting at? No one _wants_ death."

"Yes, they do. They want the death of the enemy. The desire for victory is essentially impure."

"Not if you're right."

"You can't know that you're right. Because you can't have any perspective."

"You're a disappointingly circular thinker, Malfoy. Since we can't know anything, we may as well not try to know anything. Except for this strangely sentimental and simplistic idea that death is bad." He rolled his eyes.

"Don't knock it, Potter. It's the reason I'm not a Death Eater. It's the reason I'm providing your people with information."

He said quietly, "They're your people, too."

"No, they're not. Don't get confused, Potter. I'm not one of you. I'm just not one of them."

"So why are you helping?"

"I just told you. I don't like death."

::

One night, walking alone by the lake, I found him skipping rocks at the giant squid. I stopped beside him. "Lonely, Potter?"

Harry snapped around and saw that it was me. "Yeah. No. I don't know."

"Weasley off snogging Granger?"

"Pretty much."

"Never would have expected Weasley to get so lucky."

Harry looked at me like I had grown a second head. Presumably because of my years of tormenting Granger for her homeliness and general lack of sex appeal. To be fair, she wasn't half bad by then. But that wasn't what I meant. "Think about it, Potter. Anyone whose passion for homework puts the entire school to shame probably isn't going to enter into a new, ah, recreational pursuit without doing some very thorough research."

He started laughing. "God, Malfoy. No thanks for that suggestive visual."

It felt strangely companionable to be standing there together. I loved it that I had made him laugh.

Then he asked, with careful casualness, "What about you?"

"What about me what?"

"How's your love life?"

"I'm in a lull."

"I guess the field's a little bigger though, when you kind of go either way."

That was interesting. Did Potter kind of go either way? I asked, "Wondering whom I haven't slept with?"

"Short list?"

I may have blushed. To my complete surprise, I said, "I'm actually feeling sort of ashamed of that, right at this very moment." I had no idea why I told him that. All right, maybe I did.

"Why? Don't want me to think you're a big ho?" Maybe he did, too. He snorted. "Okay, Malfoy. I promise to remember you as a virgin."

"I'm not sure that's exactly what I want." My voice was a little thick. I added, more lightly, "Although it charms me that you plan to continue pondering my sex life." 

He asked huskily, "Why are you here?" 

I turned so we were facing each other, not too far apart. His mouth was right in front of mine, thin and silky looking, dark red in his flushed face. I lifted my hand, almost without meaning to, and when he didn't move, I brushed my thumb along his lower lip. His expression didn't change. I said, "I'm trying to seduce you. If you must know."

"Shut up, Malfoy. No you're not." He licked his lips and looked simultaneously defensive and earnest. "Are you serious?" I let him watch me check him out, and then shrugged and nodded. He asked, "Why?"

"Because you're hot. Obviously. God, Potter, please don't go all girly on me."

"You think I'm hot?"

"Yes." He was. Broad-shouldered and very lean, his rumpled black hair finally long enough to look post-coital rather than cowlicky, his eyes an eerie, acid green. I realized I was staring at him and said, idiotically, "Yeah."

"I'm not going to fall in love with you."

"No. I… What?"

"I mean it."

"Fine, Potter, whatever. I'm not really worried about that right now." But maybe I was because I suddenly wasn't so sure I wanted to be getting tangled up with him. I said, "Actually, I'm going to go," and turned and left him, standing by the lake.

::

****

I assumed we wouldn't speak again until I needed him, but I was wrong. He wrote to me. The owl arrived the next morning at breakfast. Not his Hedwig, just a school owl with a folded note, my name scrawled on it in a hand I didn't recognize. I received a lot of mail; no one glanced round as I opened it. It said, "D., All right. Yes. H." D. and H. Not M. and P. I could not remember a single occasion on which Harry had used my first name. I looked up to see him already watching me. There was no particular expression on his face. He was crunching on a piece of toast, half-listening to the person rattling on beside him, his eyes carefully vague.

I didn't know what to think. He wanted me, sure, but I didn't take that as seriously as I should have; half the people in school wanted me. And half of those had had me, which infuriated him in a way I didn't understand until much later. He was such an upright good guy; he didn't like muddy boundaries or shades of gray. And promiscuity is basically emotional anarchy. For my part, I already knew I liked him too much. And he was so volatile. I thought that if we got involved, he'd hate me for things I couldn't change and I'd end up with my heart broken.

Standing by the lake that night, I hadn't thought beyond the first seduction. But once he warned me he wouldn't fall in love with me, I felt strangely doomed. Most people exist within a framework of fixed truths, like the girders of a building. Harry's relationship with the world was more fluid, because the world had always tended to bend around him. It should have remained obvious that any truce we struck for sexual purposes would be temporary and mercenary. But Harry didn't follow the rules; he made his own truths. In my case, it took only one sentence for him to turn me from a horny opportunist into a mooning lunatic.

I avoided him for almost two weeks. Then he ambushed me on my way out of Dumbledore's office. My mother had begun to suspect my loyalties and I needed to tell Dumbledore I might be compromised. It's sort of ironic that Harry attacked me on a day when I knew with such absolute clarity that I was doing the right thing. 

He was waiting, looking grim and predatory, when I emerged from the moving staircase. I stopped five feet from him. My stomach flipped over in a leisurely, nauseating way. 

"Malfoy." 

"Hello, Potter."

"What are you doing here?"

"Potter? Have you suffered a blow to the head? We've been over this. As you may recollect, if you concentrate, you're the only person who does know."

"I assumed that was over."

I grinned at him. "God, Potter. You put even my legendary vanity to shame."

Harry flushed and then went chalk white. Half a dozen freckles were suddenly visible across the bridge of his nose. I could see the bones of his knuckles in his clenched fists and the muscle flexing in his jaw. I took a step toward him and then another, thinking how much I wanted to press him up against the wall and suck all that shivering tension out of his body. He watched me walking toward him and said, "What are you doing?"

"Harry," I said, very softly, "You do realize that I sold out just to fuck you." He looked like he might slug me. I kept approaching slowly, adrenaline surging. I murmured, "Since it hasn't worked out, I'm rejoining the Muggle hunt. Lately we've been strangling them. Very satisfying. I'm thinking Granger---"

And then he did slug me. He had a terrific right hook. I must have blacked out because Dumbledore was suddenly leaning over me, pulling out his wand, and saying something to Harry. I couldn't hear very well. I do remember thinking with relief how much better it was to be lying on the stone floor, bleeding copiously from the nose and possibly deaf, than to have been found by Dumbledore, sucking out all of Harry's, er, tension. Dumbledore stopped the blood flow and sent me off to the hospital wing. I nodded, my hearing still a little wonky, and glanced at Harry. He was holding his bloody right fist in his left hand and looking deeply ashamed of himself.

::

A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.


	3. Draco's Letter 3

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and for the sex in Chapter 4.

AN: Many thanks to my delightful reviewers! You guys are the best. I really appreciate it and will try to get the next two parts up by the end of the week.

After that, Harry accepted my frequent use of his mirror without comment. In fact, we managed not to exchange a single word for six weeks. I tried to put him out of my head. Officially, there was nothing between us, but a new boy would have felt like a betrayal, or possibly provoked him to murder me, so I started dating Kalliope Drummond. She was black-haired and reckless, like Harry, but with none of the angst. We would sneak into Hogsmeade, get drunk on firewhisky, and have noisy, adventurous sex pressed up against the back walls of the buildings we passed on the way home.

That particular night, I was waiting for her, alone in the Slytherin common room. The spring dance had ended two hours earlier and everyone had gone on to an after party in the rainforest greenhouse. I was a little tired, not crazy about the rotting smell of tropical vegetation, and not looking forward to the fallout from something as illegal as irritating thousands of priceless specimen plants. My plan was to tell Kal that we should stay in, throw some fur down in front of the fireplace, and shag ourselves into next week. I liked the idea of having some privacy, for once. Her decibel level was flattering, but I could stand to make it through one morning without half the breakfast table replaying the soundtrack of the previous night.

I dozed off in a wingchair by the fire. When the door finally swung open, I yanked my head up, blinking, and then froze. The Slytherin wingchairs were velvet, so dark green they looked black. Most of the room was that color. The fire was the only light source. I have a very clear mental image of myself, shirtless, still clad in black dress pants, my pale chest and arms and white blond head luminous in the darkness. His mental image. He must have described it to me afterward. Harry Potter was standing in the doorway.

It was too dark to see his face. "Potter. How delightful. I hope you didn't kill my girlfriend to break in here."

"She's not coming."

I sat up a little and tried to focus in the low light. "What? Potter. I was joking."

"She thinks you're meeting her at the party."

"Why?"

"Because I told her you are."

"And you're here to…ravish me?" I stood up and forced my eyes to adjust, acutely aware of the space between us. 

Harry was moving toward me. "Something like that."

I kicked an ottoman out of the way and stepped past it. Then he was right in front of me, his chest inches from mine and his breath hot on my mouth. It suddenly occurred to me that he was very inexperienced. I murmured, "First time, Potter?"

"Fuck you, Malfoy."

"Very sexy. I guess you want it rough, then." I hooked one foot under his ankles, dropped him on his ass, pushed his chest flat, and pinned his hands behind his head. He struggled, but I had his legs locked under mine and he was trapped. I could feel his erection against my thigh. He looked furious and sort of confused. I laughed at him. "Relax, Potter. This is supposed to be fun."

Several expressions slid across his face. Anger, hunger, a glimmer of tenderness. I wanted to stroke my thumbs along his cheekbones, but was afraid to loose my grip on his wrists. His voice was hoarse and very low. He whispered, "Harry."

"Harry," I repeated softly, my own voice suddenly thick. Then I leaned down and kissed him. His lips were as silky as they looked. And hot. He had a strangely hot mouth, except just after he came, when all the warm blood left his tongue for points south and kissing him was like kissing someone who had been drinking ice water. But I didn't know that yet. Right then, I was thinking how surprising it was that this hard-bodied Quidditch star and savior of the wizarding world was still entirely untouched. 

I'd never been much for virgins. I didn't have a lot of patience and although I liked control, I also liked to have other people do some of the work, sometimes all of the work, but that night, it struck me as kind of thrilling that it was all still new. I kissed him for a while, very slowly, very deeply. It was like kissing anyone for the first time, sloppy and eager and like that mirror game children play, following one another's every move. 

After ten minutes of steady necking, Harry started to branch out, trying things out of sequence, or things I hadn't done. When he ran his tongue between my teeth and my upper lip, a shudder bucked its way along my body to my cock. I lost hold of his wrists and he put his warm, Quidditch-calloused hands flat on my naked sides and I squirmed and moaned and knew I was fooling myself if I thought my greater experience was enough to keep me in control. 

He flipped on top of me and I writhed underneath him, unbuttoning his shirt and sliding down until I found his nipples with my tongue. I heard him gasp and then plunged my hands beneath his belt, provoking a howl that pretty much put Kal to shame. I started laughing then, thinking about Kal compared to Harry, because, well…_Harry_…and felt him stop and slide down my body until we were face to face.

He said, "What?"

I laughed and said, "God, I love you."

"What? No you don't." He stopped moving.

"Harry. Shut up, you idiot. Right now I do. Aren't you---" But he had really stopped.

"I knew it would be like this."

"Like what?" I felt like I was dragging myself out of a heavy, delicious sleep. I struggled to concentrate.

"All sluttish and phony."

"But I---" Have never felt like this before. Really meant it when I said it. Have never seen anyone look so mouth-watering while still wearing pants. All those things were true, but I could see why he thought I was full of shit. I mean, maybe I was. Sex is like drugs. It makes you all crazy with pleasure and conviction but afterward you look back and don't know what to think. I could feel him lifting himself off of me, grew suddenly desperate, and quickly rolled on top of him. He could usually take me in a fist fight, but I was much more familiar with the human body at close quarters. I said, "Harry, please. I'm having a really good time. I'm sorry if that was premature."

"Get off me."

"Don't make me beg."

"If you don't let me up right now, I'm going to beat the shit out of you."

"Yeah, okay, in a minute…" I leaned in to kiss him again, jerked back when he practically bit through my lower lip, and watched my blood drip heavily into his face. "Holy hell, Harry. My rough sex spectrum doesn't reach all the way to disfigurement." I didn't mean to be laughing, but I felt so good with his body underneath me that I couldn't really believe he was as mad as he actually was. 

"Your _WHAT_?" I don't think I had ever heard him so enraged. Which, all things considered, means it was pretty extreme. I had no hope of preventing the punch that knocked me back onto the ottoman I had kicked aside earlier. He was instantly on his feet, his eyes full of loathing and his voice bitter and cold. "You fucking slut, Malfoy."

I sprawled across the cushion, both feet on the floor, holding my head up with my stomach muscles, and felt gingerly in my mouth with one finger to make sure he hadn't knocked out any teeth. "Harry. Calm down. I was joking." 

I sat up, spat a huge glob of blood and mucous into one hand, and looked around for a handkerchief. He was standing over me, not leaving, which struck me as a hopeful sign, although why I still wanted to sleep with such an abusive lunatic was a mystery. Rather grudgingly, he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and offered it to me. 

I wiped off my hand, dabbed at my nose, rubbed the blood off my front teeth, and pressed the wadded linen to my lower lip. "Thanks."

"I'm sorry." He looked completely freaked out. "God, I'm sorry. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Not to worry. I'm a fast healer."

He said, viciously, "Of course you are."

"For god's sake, Harry. I meant from getting beaten up by _you_. Which, considering that you're the good guy, happens pretty fucking frequently."

He sat down next to me and said again, "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, I know. I'm getting used to the five-second gamut from retribution to repentance."

Now he sounded mournful. "It's your fault."

"Ah, yes. Blaming the victim. Excellent. You'd make a much better Death Eater than I would." And in a weird way, I always did think that was true. He was far too moral of course, but, unlike me, he had a stomach for sustained violence.

"Jesus, Malfoy. Why are you so fucking calm?" He was simultaneously angry and very sad and I wanted to kiss him so badly that my right foot cramped up. Eventually the pain from that made me groan, which caused him to look stricken and me to start laughing again.

I pulled myself together. "Look. I want you. And you obviously want me."

"God, Malfoy. This whole thing is so fucked up. I don't even know."

"Yes. You do. And it'll be better if I'm conscious. And not bleeding so much. And I'm very good. Don't look at me like that. I know any reference to my sex life, apart from our little sadomasochistic encounters, makes you think I'm a filthy whore, but the fact is, if my only intimate experience were having you sock me in the mouth, I wouldn't be able to kiss you the way I can." 

He put his hands over his face and said, "Fine. All right. Just stop." I never did understand why it bothered him so much. Eventually, I stopped worrying about it.

"So you're in?"

"Maybe."

"Because there are going to be a few rules."

"What are you talking about?"

I pulled the handkerchief away from my face and looked at it. It was pretty gruesome. "Regardless of what you may think of me in the privacy of your kinky mind, I do not want to be in a situation where someone needs to get hit to get off. All right?" Harry looked shocked and also contrite.

He said, very softly, "What else?"

I shrugged. "It might help if you weren't so suspicious of me."

"Yeah. I'm… I don't know."

"Just shut up and pay attention." I turned to face him, put my hands on either side of his neck, and very gently pressed my lips to his. He leaned into it, poking at me with his tongue, but I made him wait. By the time I opened my mouth, he was gasping. We pretty quickly got back to where we had been before, but when I was about to pull his belt open, I stopped.

He looked down at me nervously and whispered, "Malfoy?" I couldn't believe he was still using my last name. "Are you all right?" 

"I'm… Yeah. Here, let's get up off the floor." I debated for a moment and then said, "Let's go lie down."

"In bed?" He sounded so terrified that I started laughing again.

::

A/N: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.


	4. Draco's Letter 4

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and sex.

AN: This is the section in which Draco and Harry get it on. It gets a little graphic. If you aren't interested, you can scroll down to the first "::" symbol (about halfway through the chapter) to get back to the plot. The next and final part is all plot and is Harry's POV. I really liked switching voices, so even if you skip what's below, I'd love for you to hang on for that. Any feedback is much appreciated. Thanks! 

I liked having Harry in my bed. I worked my way slowly from the faded tan mark on his neck to the pencil line of soft black hair beneath his navel. When I reached his belt, I looked up and saw that his eyes were closed. Which made me feel, on top of ridiculously horny, strangely tender. 

I undid his buckle, slid his pants off, and took his cock in my mouth. His hips jerked so hard he probably gave me another black eye, but that was totally different. That was fine. 

His cock was about the same length as mine and slightly thicker. It curved much more strongly to the left. I lay on his left side, propped on one elbow, and sucked on it lazily, running my mouth up and down. After a bit, I added one hand, then the other, and then had to hold him down with both forearms to keep him from knocking me off the bed. 

When I stopped, he said, "Oh my god. Malfoy. Oh my god." He didn't open his eyes. It was pretty cute, how expectantly he was waiting for me to finish him off. 

I stretched out next to him, slung my arm over his chest, said, "Yeah," and let the tension drain out of me like I was about to fall asleep.

Harry rolled onto his side, alarmed, and looked down at me. I half expected him to poke me and struggled to keep from laughing. After a moment, I felt him assessing my body. When he tugged on my belt, I groaned in spite of myself. I peeked through my lashes and saw him grin as he got my pants undone and prepared to go to work on me. 

He was terrible at first, but I wanted him so badly it didn't matter. By the time he finally caught the rhythm of it, long strings of hot saliva lacing my hips and thighs, I was so excited that I thought I might black out. Huge green clouds were interrupting my vision and I was having trouble breathing. I grabbed his head and pulled him up along my chest. He said, "How was that?"

"Do you want…can I…should we…?" He had no idea what I was talking about. I took him in my mouth again and felt him flip around to do the same. Just short of orgasm, it occurred to me how impressive it was that he hadn't come in the first five minutes. When we finally did, within seconds of each other, it was like a gas explosion. Afterward, I lay there for a bit, watching the sparkly insides of my eyelids, my mouth still around him.

When we sat up and faced each other, his chin was all slick, which was possibly the sexiest thing I had ever seen. I took his face in my hands and kissed him. Our mouths were salty and bitter. He rubbed one sticky palm off on his chest. I leaned down and licked that and felt his mouth on my neck and his hands in my hair. Then we were kissing again. Pretty soon, he dipped his head down. I pulled him back and said, "Wow. No. God. Harry. That's not how I want to…have you…this time."

He sat, looking at me, still not sure what I meant.

I said, "Do you trust me?"

He nodded, but I didn't believe him.

"Seriously, Harry. I'm really, really happy right now. I don't know what that means. It may not mean anything. But until we both come again, I am prepared to do anything you want. And I'm pretty sure you're going to want this." 

I kissed his mouth, traveled across his cheek, breathed into his ear, and sucked my way along his neck to his shoulder. He shivered and I followed his collarbone over his shoulder toward his back, easing my body around his until I was able to suck hard on the skin over the bones in his nape. He groaned and I pulled him down onto his side, kissing my way along his vertebrae and slowly pushing him onto his stomach. 

There was a shift in the alertness of his skin and I could feel an inviting tautness in his muscles. I thought, aha, now he knows where this is going. When my tongue reached the base of his spine, he gasped and I slid on top of him, holding his thighs apart with my knees.

I was moving pretty slowly, running my tongue into that soft cleft, and then inside him, gently following with one finger, then with two, using some slippery stuff I kept on the night stand. I slid my other hand under his stomach, tightly gripped his cock, and braced him as he bucked under me. 

When I started to feel like he wanted it so badly that desire had overwhelmed any last shreds of hesitation, I stretched out over him, my legs aligned with his, tangled my free hand in his hair, and sucked a hard hickey into the back of his neck. I muttered, "Are you sure?" 

He nodded. He was lying on one cheek. His eyes were closed. I rested my cheekbone on his, tilted my head to kiss the side of his mouth, and asked him again. He nodded again. I could feel myself pressing against him, everything hot and liquid, the tip of me in that wet concavity, his hips slightly raised and pushing back.

"Harry," I groaned, hoarse and hungry, "You have to say it. Say you want it. Say my name."

"God," he murmured. "Yes. Please just…yes already. Please. Now." Then he said, "Draco," and the blood pounding just beneath the surface of my skin went up in flames. 

I tried to be gentle, but all those slick nerve endings were like noise, screaming through my body, and the hand I had gripped around his shoulder was slippery with sweat, and the moment he murmured to me to go faster, I lost any last vestiges of control and my body was moving at a speed I couldn't really understand and all I wanted was to retain consciousness until it happened.

When it finally did, there was a pause first, like an eye in a storm, a slow moment of racheting up, and for an instant I was intensely aware of the dense, silky surface of his skin, his hair in my mouth, the trembling muscles in both our thighs as if we'd been running sprints---and then we tipped over, accelerating, everything rocketing outwards, both of us crying out so loudly that the silence that followed was deafening. 

After a few minutes I could hear us breathing again and recognized the feeling of Harry's hot, sticky body under mine. I noticed that his very wet cock was softening in my hand. I put my mouth on the back of his neck, too disoriented to form a kiss.

He said, "Jesus." 

"Yeah." I didn't want him to pull away from me and rolled us onto our sides, still together. I licked his neck. "So. How was that?"

I could tell he was smiling, knew his eyes were closed, and anticipated the exact moment when he carefully disentangled himself from my hand, shrugged us apart, and settled onto his back. I curled against him, draped an arm across his chest, and felt his fingers in my hair. He said, "It was… Wow. Sex. I like it."

I smiled. "I thought you might."

"Of course you did. Because you know me so well. Draco." He was laughing.

I said, "Yeah. Well. Now I guess I do." 

::

****

Kal found us. Hilariously, being Kal, she was totally unfazed. She just curled up next to me and fell asleep. When Harry woke up, there were three arms wrapped around him. I opened my eyes a minute or two after he did, looked up at his lifted brows, down at the extra hand, back at Kal, and shrugged at him. He extricated himself gently and whispered that he had to leave. I nodded and tried to stay on the bed, as if falling back asleep with Kal were what I most wanted to do, but I couldn't pull it off. I finally slipped away from her to follow him to the door. "So. That was, ah---"

"Yeah. Look, Malfoy." I must have looked stricken because he immediately said, "Draco."

"What?"

"We can't… I mean… This is obviously…"

I looked away from him. "Yeah. I know."

"Okay."

"I will point out to you that you chased me pretty hard for a person who just wanted to make sure his first time was a really good lay."

"Jesus. Draco."

"Yeah. I know. I sound like a hysterical girl." We both looked at Kal, asleep on the bed. She was sort of gorgeous, with her gazelle limbs and curly black hair. She had the sheet twisted around her like a toga and was sucking on her fingers. I felt an obligatory throb in my groin and said, "It usually wears off after a few hours."

"What does?"

"The glow."

"Oh. Really?"

"Usually."

His voice was a little tight. He said, "Right. Okay then."

"Maybe not. The sex is better with you."

"Really?" Harry couldn't quite play that off. I smiled. He said, "Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I really liked it. But we can't exactly… I mean, it's so…weird."

"You're ashamed of me."

"I am, actually." He looked startled. 

"That's all right. Look, Harry. I had a really good time. You're very sexy." I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth and felt him tense a little with anticipation. Then I pulled away. "Now get out of here before someone notices you've spent the night with me." He left and I slowly pushed the door shut behind him.

::

Later, after Kal cleared out, giddily agreeing to keep our secret if I promised to include her next time, it occurred to me that whether or not it went anywhere in the short term, there wouldn't actually be a long term. For reasons that I had no intention of telling you. 

Which was too bad, because it was heavenly, Harry, very nearly a reason to live, certainly the best I ever had. And I know you're rolling your eyes right now, recollecting my appalling promiscuity. But as I think I've just proven to you (and now I'm picturing you, lying in bed, the hangings pulled shut, wrecking your eyes reading this in the low light, hurting and furious with me, but also disturbingly aroused) I'm quite sincere. 

So, right now, while…_this _and_ you_…are still fresh in my mind, the glow pulsing in my limbs, and the air in my room heady with musk, I've decided to write it all down. I hope you enjoy it, Harry. And while my declaration earlier may have been premature, I know that between my writing this and your reading it, I'll say it again, maybe lots of times, laughing or smiling or deadly serious, and I know that at some point, before it's too late, you'll believe me. 

::

AN: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.


	5. Harry's Epilogue

Disclaimer: Not my characters.

NB: Slash.

R: For fighting and swearing and the sex in Chapter 4.

AN: Special thanks to all my reviewers: Usually Immaculate Aristocrat, who got the ball rolling; XOX, for being a generous repeat reader; Milly the SmutzOr; Alex Destine; BigGreenMonkey; Hitotsu Kaji; and Layce 74.

****

Harry's Epilogue

When Dumbledore came to me and told me that he had some things of Draco's for me, I thought I might be physically sick. A week earlier, Draco had been ambushed outside his parents' London townhouse by a gang of Death Eaters. Six against one. The Auror who found him identified him by his ring.

For the first few days, the pain was like noise. I could barely function. When Snape expressed his very sarcastic astonishment at my grief, one day as I passed him in a dungeon corridor, I rounded on him with such fury that I accidentally collapsed the back wall of the passage. He barely scrambled out of the rubble alive. I just stood there, watching him, covered with rock dust, completely unmoved. 

Draco was the only free thinker I met in six years of school. He became the only person whose relationship with me was not predicated on shared assumptions. I never had a friend who didn't agree with what I stood for. Half the people I knew came and went for political reasons. Sometimes I was a hero, sometimes I was a crackpot. My social circle changed accordingly. Draco wanted me despite the fact that he never expected to agree with me about anything. 

He would have said it was all about the sex, but he wouldn't have meant that, not really. If you were willing to read between the lines, he was very tender. He would have said the same was true of me, if you changed it to reading between the punches. Then, to soften it, he would have added that it might just be him; maybe around other people I was a pacifist. Or at least a rational thinker. I'm self-aware enough to know that's not true, but there might be something to the idea that from the very beginning, long before we got together, some part of me already wanted any excuse to put my hands on him.

Once I got over the initial shock of being with him, I wanted to tell people. I suppose mainly to prove that I wasn't ashamed of him. He said, "Harry. That's very sweet. But I'm a spy. And you're a ridiculously public person. It took you most of last year to get those idiots at the Ministry to believe in you again. Don't confuse them."

Hermione figured it out. But only because he gave it away to her. I think he knew it would be easier for me afterward if at least one person had a head start on the idea. He passed her in the hall one day, walking with Ron, and said, "The way I used to go on at you was unforgivably boorish. And you've proved me quite wrong. The way you look now, I'd seduce you myself. But it would break Potter's heart." 

Ron, of course, thought Draco was diabolically managing to insult and ignore him simultaneously. But Hermione was smart enough to know that Draco knew there had never been anything between us. He meant that my heart would break because of him.

Draco never wanted to talk about why he started giving us information. His intelligence provided us with an enormous advantage. Remus and Dumbledore both regarded him as a hero. And he was, even physically. It took a hell of a lot of those fuckers to bring him down. I try not to picture the way he would have looked, dueling and cornered, his feline stance and easy smirk and the dark blood in his pale hair…

Dumbledore said gently, "Harry. I know this is hard. But there are some things that he wanted you to have."

He always knew he was going to die. He knew there was no time. It makes me so angry to think that he knew that and never told me. But there's no place for all that rage. I said, "Like what?"

"A spelled parchment addressed to you. A silver pocket knife. A snitch."

I laughed, low and bitter. "A school snitch? Can you leave people things that are stolen?"

"I won't mention it if you don't."

"Okay. Yeah. I just… I can't go into his room."

Dumbledore looked at me a little strangely. He said, "I'm glad you and Draco had a chance to make peace. He was very courageous. In choosing against his father, he showed extraordinary strength of character."

"Yeah. I know." Then I said, "Thank you, sir. That means a lot to me."

Later, after reading Draco's rather lurid account of our first night together, I lay in bed with the curtains drawn, freeing and catching the snitch, which glowed in the low light. It was creepy but also funny that even posthumously, Draco could still get me so worked up. I was crying; I wanted to hurl things hard against the wall; I felt undeniably horny. And he knew it, the evil bastard. 

I loved Draco for a lot of reasons. He was level-headed and sardonic and sexy as hell. I loved his silver hair and smoky eyes. I loved the way he looked so deceptively lazy, leaning or sprawling or smiling, until something startled him and he was instantly alert as a cat. I loved how coolly he'd watch me lose my temper and how delicately he could talk me back onto a rational plane.

I remember finally admitting that I wanted him, how murderously jealous I was that so many people had been with him before me, and how enraged and betrayed I felt when it seemed he'd changed his mind. I'm still ashamed of hitting him that day outside Dumbledore's office, when he leaned into me and let me know he knew I thought his collaboration was just a ploy to get me into bed. I always did think the world revolved around me. Draco would have said, affectionately, that I had good reason; it always kind of did. And then he would have kissed me. 

Sometimes, part of me wishes his only goal in becoming a spy had been to seduce me, because then once he got me, he would have let the mission go. He might still be alive. But the rest of me knows that's crazy. I only loved him like I did because he knew what he thought and acted on it and didn't give a damn about death. 

His own death. He was kind of careful about other people. I wonder what he'd think if he knew how much I'd like to murder his six killers with the pocket knife he left me. How messy and brutal and satisfying it would be. Or maybe he did know and that's why he left me that letter, to give me something else to think about when I lie awake at night. So far it's been working. I guess we'll see how long that lasts.

The End

::

AN: Thanks for reading. Reviews are very welcome.


End file.
